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ICYMI: EDITORIAL: Emails Show Solyndra Push Was Rahm Emanuel's Idea

August 6, 2012

Investor's Business Daily
August 3, 2012
Editorial

Scandal: The sunlight continues to expose the machinations behind the White House's support of failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra with our tax dollars, including IBDthe false claim by former White House chief of staff.

In a batch of White House emails released in a report on Solyndra by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, there's this gem: White House aide Aditya Kumar wrote to Jacob Levine of the Office of Energy and Climate Change on Aug. 19, 2009: "Feels like Rahm wants this too (barring any concerns) — POTUS (President Of The United States) Involvement (in pushing Solyndra) was Rahm's idea."

Of course, Emanuel, who helped bring the infamous "Chicago Way" of politics from the Windy City to the nation's capitol, has long denied being a mover and shaker in the Solyndra affair. …

The Aug. 17, 2009, email released in one of the administration's famous Friday document dumps showed a White House staffer referring to Ron Klein, former chief of staff for Vice President Biden, saying to an Obama scheduler: "Ron said this morning that POTUS definitely wants to do this (or Rahm definitely wants to do this?)."

In an editorial last September, we noted an Aug. 31, 2009, email in which an assistant to Emanuel wrote to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about the upcoming Biden announcement on Solyndra and asked whether "there is anything we can help speed along on the OMB side." The director of the OMB at the time was Jack Lew, now White House chief of staff.

"This deal is NOT ready for prime time," one OMB analyst had written in a March 10, 2009, email.

Another Aug. 31, 2009, message written by an OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden's domestic policy adviser, concluded: "We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews."